


Full Fathom Five

by Anise



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:13:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anise/pseuds/Anise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war drags on and on, and Ginny and Draco are trapped in a never-ending cycle of passion, betrayal, revenge, and reunion on opposite sides of the battle… until a terrifying chance comes along to change it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

+++

 

Old man, you surface seldom.  
Then you come in with the tide's coming  
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,  
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves  
Crest and trough. Miles long.

 

\-- Sylvia Plath, Full Fathom Five

 

+++

The first time was the skirmish in the catacombs underneath the abandoned Ministry five months before, about a month after Midwinter, when Ginny had guessed correctly that Death Eaters would try to steal crucial maps from the underground library. Her information had led the Order forces to intercept the attempt, and even though Ron had blustered that it was too dangerous, and Hestia Jones had agreed that she was just too valuable to them all to put at risk, she had gone along on the raid. She’d argued that only she really knew the area well, and it was true, but that wasn’t why she went along.

She’d seen the tall, black-cloaked figure at the very end of the row of shelves, and she’d caught the flash of silvery hair in the dim light. And she hadn’t told any of the Order members that he was there. Someone else certainly would have done, she knew. Their eyes had met. She was sure of it, or at least she had been at the time. And he hadn’t told any of the Death Eaters that she was there, either. They had let each other go.

The second time was the raid on the ruins of Hogwarts three months before, around Imbeholc, where the remnants of the Order had set up temporary headquarters. What the Death Eaters didn’t know, however, was that the other side had led them into a trap, planned and set up primarily by Ginny Weasley. The pincers had closed on them, and in the fighting, a tall, fair-haired figure had fallen, apart from the rest. The heart that Ginny thought she didn’t have anymore had plummeted through her chest as she ran to where he lay on the floor of a deserted Charms classroom. When she twitched his cloak aside and found that he was Zacharias Smith, who’d gone over to the Death Eaters long ago, she had sunk back on her heels, dizzy with relief.

It took her several minutes to realize who was standing above her, his silvery hair shining in the moonlight. Once again, their eyes had met. Both of their wands were drawn. She could have captured him, or at least tried to do so; he could have done the same to her. Both of them put their wands away, very slowly. He held out his hand to her, and she took it, and for the first time in over two years, the first time since the end of the war, the war that neither side had won in the end, he touched her. It could not have hurt her more if he had stabbed her to the heart. She heard his quick indrawn breath of pain, and she wondered what it had done to him. Then both of them walked away.

The third time was during the intense fighting for Hogsmeade, only one week before, just before the spring festival, not that anyone celebrated that anymore. They were all darting from house to house, Order members and Death Eaters alike, shooting the increasingly ineffective spells at each other in a nightmare of confusion and yelling and smoke and darkness. Ginny had been running through what remained of the Three Broomsticks, separated from everyone else, searching desperately for Hermione and Luna, when she came face to face with him. She ran into him so hard that all the breath was knocked out of her, and she reeled back against the bar; she could see her white, terrified face reflected in the jagged pieces of broken mirror behind it. His face was as pale as death, rising from a cloak black as a grave. For a crazy instant all she could think was that he was still as beautiful as he’d been when he’d come to her so late on the night of the last battle of Hogwarts, after they were all so sure that the war was really over. And they’d all been so very, very wrong. A few weeks later, Narcissa Malfoy had died.

His wand was drawn; hers was still tucked into her trousers. He had her, she thought almost calmly. He’d be a fool not to capture her now. She had been the brains behind the Order for a long time. Without her cunning and her plans, they might already have been defeated. Would he kill her? She’d turned the idea over in her mind, coldly. All of her emotions seemed frozen into ice at the moment. He certainly can’t haul me before Voldemort for a spot of Cruciatus, she thought. Seeing as the Dark Lord’s been dead for two years, although that didn’t exactly fix everything, did it? Or at least everyone else is convinced that he’s dead. Why am I the only one who can’t quite believe it? And where’s Harry, that’s the question nobody can answer, of course. Maybe he’s set up light housekeeping with the Dark Lord, somewhere… A mad impulse to giggle seized her.

But he wouldn’t have wanted to see Voldemort torture her, anyway, she’d thought. No. That wouldn’t have pleased him much. Maybe he’d rather torture her himself. You already have, she thought, looking at his painfully beautiful face. I’ve paid and paid for everything I’ve ever been to you. Oh, you’ll never know how high the price has been. No, if he could have asked Voldemort for anything, thought Ginny, he would have asked his Dark Lord if he could keep her for himself as a reward, because ever since he had made his choice to remain with the Death Eaters, and then, finally, to lead the Death Eaters, after one war had ended and another had begun, he could never, ever have her in any other way. But now that there was no Voldemort anymore, he could choose to keep her without asking anyone’s permission.

That would be torture enough, thought Ginny. It would be exquisite pleasure and unbearable pain, intermingled every moment of every day and every night until she would no longer be able to tell the difference, and she wondered if she would finally go mad.

And if he put out his hand to take her, Ginny knew that she would not even try to fight him.

But he didn’t put out his hand. He turned away, and he left her. A group of Order members burst in then, led by Anthony Goldstein. Ginny didn’t tell them that he’d been there, even though they probably could have caught him.

It wasn’t until all the confusion was over that everyone realized Ron was missing.

“He was right next to me,” Hermione keeps repeating over and over during the Order meeting afterwards. “Honestly, Ginny, I did my best to keep hold of him, I’d put every Tracking spell on him, of course you know that none of them works terribly well anymore but still I was up until midnight every night last week trying to make them more effective and I thought I’d achieved at least thirty-seven percent more efficiency on some of them and—“

She goes on and on until it is all that Ginny can do not to hit her. Not that what anyone else has said is much more useful. Nobody even seems to know exactly when Ron disappeared, much less who had taken him. The only thing anyone can say is that he must have vanished after the last time Draco Malfoy was seen, but nobody seems to know when that was.

I do, thinks Ginny. I do.

Chances. All those chances to capture him that she let slip through her fingers, and she knows it now; chances where he had let her slip through his. When Ginny thinks about it, there might very well have been other chances too, other occasions, but they were always too subtle to be sure of. These last three chances were not subtle. They were close enough to touch each other, and sometimes they did touch, close enough to look into each others’ eyes, and every time, they had looked. She always knew that their past together has made her perilously weak, when it comes to him; she always had times when she thought about warning the Order not to trust her so very much because of this. But she didn’t want them to know about her past with him. She is, has been, trustworthy in everything else. But when it comes to Draco Malfoy, she is a broken reed, and now it is too late.

But it can’t be too late, she tells herself fiercely, sitting at the table in the basement of their meeting room in the back alley. I won’t let it be too late. She knows that she only has one more chance now.

“There’s only one way to even have any hope of finding Ron, because you know that the Death Eaters are probably holding him there anyway, even though he doesn’t show up on a Tracking spell,” she says mechanically. “We’ve got to go ahead with the plan. I’ve got to go ahead with it.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to manage it now?” Luna asks thoughtfully, almost as if her question holds no more than simple curiousity.

“I have to,” says Ginny grimly. “If we wait, it won’t work, you know that. And anyway, it’s not as if I need to be in the right frame of mind to do magic, is it?”

An awkward sort of silence falls over the room. Ever since Harry Potter disappeared only a few weeks after the supposed end of the war, the magic of the wizarding world has been failing and falling away, spells losing their power, charms breaking down, curses weakening. But for this plan, Ginny doesn’t need magic.

“I suppose not,” says Luna.

“We can’t afford any delay,” says Ginny. “I’ll go tomorrow. We know that Draco Malfoy’s off getting reinforcements until after May Day, so I can’t wait—it’s got to be before he comes back-- “ Her voice catches. She wonders if Luna is looking at her strangely. Luna has always seen too much and understood more than she should, and the ability goes deeper than magic.

If Ginny had to rely on magic to get into Malfoy Manor, she doubts that she could succeed at this task, no matter what. The spells protecting it have always been too formidable for that. But she knows another way, and she’s always been able to deflect questions from Order members about exactly how she learned it (although that’s never really put Luna off the scent very well, has it, she thinks uncomfortably.)

“You’ll never get me in here in a million years,” she’d said to Draco, laughing. It was May Day, a school holiday, and everyone else was much too busy dancing round the maypole and picnicking to notice that they’d both left the grounds. Later on in the evening, of course, they both knew that there would be a good deal of something else going on among the older students, which would make it even less likely that they’d be missed. “What do you want to bet the wards around it are probably specifically set to keep Weasleys out?” she asked as he tried to sneak her through the back kitchen gardens.

“I wouldn’t bet much,” he said, “because you’re right. They have been since the Norman Invasion, you know. But I’m not going to let anything keep this Weasley out.” Then he had turned and kissed her in the wildflowers until warmth spread all through her, and even though he looked tired and strained and afraid, as he did all through that year, he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen, and even though mysteries haunted him, she didn’t care, and in that moment he was her sweet secret and she was his and nothing else mattered in the world. He took her in through the hidden back entrance that led through the sunporch, down a winding little hall, past a warren of small spare bedrooms on the back ground floor of the manor, and up a winding flight of stairs to his own private rooms.

“Nobody will ever find us here,” he said. “I’ve got my rooms protected by spells that even the Dark Lord himself can’t break. You’re safe here, Ginny, and so am I.”

They were cold and formal as a museum, filled with priceless white and gold French furniture, and so perfect that she was almost frightened to touch anything. She sat perched on the edge of a chair for a long time, but Draco finally coaxed her onto his enormous walnut four-poster bed and drew its sumptuous curtains so that all she saw was the rose garden in full bloom, outside his bay window. Then they sat up and talked, and somehow she found her way into his arms, and they ended up snogging passionately all afternoon long. As the sun began to go down over the horizon, he slipped his hands under her cloak and touched her breasts under her blouse, tentatively. She had moaned and arched her back and pushed her chest forward, into his, until she startled herself with her own desire. But when he started to lower her down to the mattress and his long, elegant fingers began unfastening her buttons, and his silvery eyes darkened at the sight of the edge of her black lace bra, she shook her head. “We can’t,” she’d said, even though it felt like she’d never wanted anything so much as to let him continue. He sighed, and took her back to Hogwarts.

That was the first time he had taken her to Malfoy Manor.

Ginny doesn’t trust herself to Apparate onto the grounds, so she takes the train into Wiltshire and then hires a car into the nearest village. She parks at Stonehenge, looks round quickly for tourists, and quickly says the spell that will reveal the Malfoy property behind anything that is visible to Muggles, praying that everything works. It really should, though, she thinks. This is the oldest sort of primal earth magic, and it doesn’t rely on more recent wizarding knowledge.

The fields and roads shimmer, and then resolve into the outer boundaries of the Malfoy lands. Ginny breathes a sigh of relief and begins walking. Apparition would be better, though. Apparition wouldn’t give me time to think. Oh, gods, I don’t want to think! She tries to simply run over the plan in her head again. The Order has been working this out for so very long, after all; she needs to get it right in every detail.

Only a few months after the end of the war, right in the middle of all the rejoicing, Harry had disappeared. Nobody knew where Harry was, of course, but the most logical idea was that the remnant of the Death Eaters had kidnapped him. This would fit in with the way that all wizarding magic had been weakened so much. Ginny immediately was thrust into the utterly unsought position of a sort of unofficial Harry Potter-widow, and as such, was treated with deference. Without a doubt, their dating partnership had been quite official in the weeks after the war. They’d been photographed together at dances and dinners and charity events, parades in Harry’s honor, statue unveilings, building dedications, and the gods only knew what else, because Ginny certainly couldn’t remember almost any of it. The days had passed in a dizzying whirl, and the nights… well, she’d rather not remember the nights at all.

But less than a week later, nobody needed to remember anything. The Death Eaters rose from ashes like a dark phoenix, striking with terrible force at the very heart of the wizarding world. They destroyed the Ministry and Hogwarts on the same day, and they used Muggle weapons to do it. Lucius Malfoy was their new leader, Narcissa was already dead, of course (and Ginny tried not to think too much about that,) and nobody knew the extent of Draco’s involvement for a long time. Nobody could say exactly how Ginny emerged into such a prominent position in the resurgence of the Order when she was barely seventeen years old, but it probably had a great deal to do with the utter chaos, and the fact that without Harry, she seemed to be the next best thing. Then everyone found that she seemed to know what the Death Eaters were going to do before they did it themselves, and she quietly slipped into her position as the brains behind the resistance.

But then after Draco Malfoy’s father had died in a raid six months earlier, he had taken over the Death Eaters completely, and she began seeing him on raids for the first time in two years, and it seemed that one thing led to another and snowballed. And finally she had ended up here, with her brother gone and her heart aching desperately, and their long-held plan all in her hands, the hands that she could feel trembling, filled with weakness over the silvery-haired young man in the house she was approaching now.

The hidden entrance isn’t easy to find; the gardens have grown up round the entire wall where she thinks it is, and after all, she’s only seen it twice, but Ginny does eventually find the small, weatherbeaten door under a tangle of vines. She picks the lock with two hairpins twisted together. If there were any spells protecting it, they’ve broken down now. The door swings open on rusty hinges with a horribly loud squeak, and she winces, wishing she’d thought to bring a can of oil. Her breath catches.

The back corridors and the tiny spare rooms are elegant, clean, perfectly preserved, and in these days, when nearly everything from the old days and old world seems to lie in ruins, this seems bizarre at the very least. But it makes sense, Ginny tells herself. It really only means that what they figured out in Order meetings when they came up with this plan is correct. Malfoy Manor is, in fact, the headquarters for the new Death Eaters; it doesn’t make sense for those to be anywhere else. So Hermione must be right about Harry, too.

“Harry is there,” she’d said flatly in that first planning meeting six months before, the one that had led to all the others. “The Finding spell proves it. No, I don’t know why his Trace should be so very strong when no other spells are working these days, but the results are conclusive. He’s somewhere in Malfoy Manor. And honestly, the only idea that makes any sense anyway is that the Death Eaters have been holding him at the Manor all along. My theory is that they’re somehow controlling his power, or lessening it; no, I don’t know how, but it would explain the way that all the magic has been steadily weakening ever since he disappeared. Don’t you agree, Ron?”

And Ron would always nod, but as the meetings went on, he seemed to have less and less to actually say to Hermione’s theories, thinks Ginny as she steals down the corridor, moving as quietly as she can. Something happened to the shining image of the Golden Trio, although when or how, she didn’t know. But she has her ideas as to why, and she sometimes thinks that Ron does, too.

She reaches the little winding staircase without anyone stopping her or catching her, and she glances up the dark little stairs. If she goes up three flights, she knows that she will come out into Draco’s bedroom. She closes her eyes, and briefly, she sees it again; the room where she had gone twice with Draco, and the big wooden four-poster bed where she had lain down twice with Draco, the one where she and Draco Malfoy had once… had once…

Ginny hurries down the staircase so fast that she almost twists an ankle.

Over an hour and a half later, she sits on the same landing, wiping cobwebs off her forehead. Harry isn’t anywhere in the dungeons. But that was where he was supposed to be! The entire plan depended on her being able to go down there and quickly get him out. They didn’t know exactly where he was in the Manor, only that he was there, but that was the only place where he could have been kept secured for two entire years. Anywhere else would simply have been too risky from the Death Eaters’ point of view, because the Dementors had all disappeared and Azkaban couldn’t be guarded or defended anymore. Could everybody in the Order have been wrong? Maybe Harry wasn’t being kept there at all. But Hermione had been so sure, and the results of that Tracking spell had been so clear and strong…

A scampering noise on the stairs makes her jump a foot in the air, but it’s only a cat chasing a mouse round the corner. She puts a hand to her chest and hears the thump-thump of her heart. It’s turned out to be nothing this time, but the very next noise she hears could be anything at all. House-elf spies, for instance, or one of the other Death Eaters left behind to guard the Manor. Or Draco himself, something traitorous within whispered to her. No. That was impossible. He was away until after May Day; she’d specifically gathered that intelligence, or she’d never have even thought of coming here now. And no matter what it did to her, she had to come here now. It’s the only way to save Ron. And to find Harry, of course, she has to remind herself, because that was the original plan, of course, except that she can’t seem to find him.

Is there anywhere else that either of them could possibly be? She wonders. It would have to be a space capable of being magically shielded so strongly that the Order couldn’t find him; even if that doesn’t make much difference now, when all the spells are weakening so much, that would have had to be taken into consideration in the Death Eater plans when Harry was first kidnapped. But even in Malfoy Manor, she can’t think of anyplace else like that besides the dungeons. She chews on a fingernail, her mind racing.  
Unless…

Oh, gods.

Yes, there is such a place, but only one.

Nobody will ever find us here, he said. You’re safe here, Ginny, and so am I.

Draco Malfoy’s rooms, protected by spells that even the Dark Lord himself could not break. Was it possible that Harry had somehow been held there for two years?

There’s no point in going up to the fourth floor, of course. If Voldemort couldn’t have broken into Draco’s rooms, then clearly she can’t do it. If she tries, she’ll undoubtedly be caught by spying house-elves, thrown in the dungeons herself, and passed round as a Death Eaters’ play-toy before Draco even returns from his errand. It would be the height of lunacy to go up one stair. The best thing to do would be to turn around right now and run all the way back to Wiltshire, take the train back to London, and explain to the entire Order that the mission had failed.

And abandon her brother.

Ginny forces her feet to move up the stairs. They drag at every step; it feels like walking through murky water filled with malevolent sea-creatures that want to pull her down and drown her. She hesitates on the fourth-floor landing. Her brother’s face swims up in front of her. Ron, Ron, oh Ron.

She stands in front of the elegant gold and white door to Draco’s rooms for several minutes before she can raise her hand to it. There really is no point in using a wand for this spell and she knows it; either this sort of Opening charm will work, or it won’t. It has nothing to do with wizarding magic. It’s one of the old primal magics that she once learned about surreptitiously in the Forbidden Books section at Hogwarts, from one of the parchments that Ron would have had an apoplectic fit if she’d known she’d read. She is very glad that she remembers a few of these charms now, no matter how vaguely. If it works, if this door opens to her now, it will be because of what she had done in this room with Draco Malfoy on a warm May night two years before, and for no other reason.

“ Abent,” she whispers, and the door swings open.

 

For an instant, all she can think is that the room is the same, exactly the same, as if frozen in time, as if preserved by a magic spell, except that no magic spell works this well anymore. No. It is as if time itself has turned back. She tiptoes in, hardly daring to breathe, moving past the impossibly elegant ebony bureau, the pearwood sofa with its embroidered rose cushions that look too unimaginably perfect to sit on, the cold fireplace with the white and gold columns and engraved fleur de lis, the inlaid teak table with the gold baroque scrolls on its legs, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with the leather-backed books… oh, gods, it’s all, all exactly the same as it was two years before. And the bed! There’s the huge four-poster canopy bed with its dark woods and elaborately draped curtains. Ginny’s cheeks burn. She remembers that bed so well. All too well. There are times when she’s wished that she could burn the memory out of her head, or cut it out, but she knows that she never could.

Abruptly, she looks away. One wall still has that enormous mirror framed in gold, the one with the ridiculous carving of the Malfoy crest on top, all dragons and eagles and soppy-looking house-elves and the gods only know what else. She teased Draco about it the first time he was here, and he laughed, and said that she didn’t have to look at the crest—there was a reason why it was on the wall across from the bed. He’d raised one eyebrow and smirked at her. She’d suddenly realized what he meant, and primly blushed. But she could feel a sort of tug between her legs, too, not that she’d ever admit it, and she hadn’t been able to keep the sudden image from her mind of herself and Draco intertwined on that bed, reflected in the mirror—

Ginny walks up to the mirror and deliberately pats her hair, running her fingers through it, trying to comb out the tangles. Why did I think that Harry would just be casually be sitting around Draco Malfoy’s bedroom, or Ron, either? she thinks tiredly. What if they’re both somehow shielded by magical spells? What if the Death Eaters have figured out how to do it even though we can’t? What if— what if, what if, what if. She gives a long, exhausted sigh. She looks pale and drawn, and her eyes are dark and enormous. She feels like a fool.

“Shite,” she mumbles, aware of how ridiculous it is to say aloud what she is about to say. “On top of everything else, I look just bloody awful.”

Something moves in the mirror. Her heart stops, simply stops for a beat, before it picks up and thumps so rapidly that it feels like it is going to take off. A shimmering, silvery head is shaking from side to side. It’s been there all along, she realizes. I only see it now because it’s moving. What the hell else is going on that I don’t see?

Draco Malfoy rises from one of the elegant chairs at the far end of the room and walks towards her with all the elegance and grace of a dancer, just as he has always done. It’s a long walk; she has more than enough time to try to get away from him. She doesn’t try. Clearly, there’s no point. He stops just behind her.

“No, you don’t,” he says. “You’re beautiful, Weasley. You could never be anything else.” Then he shuts his lips tightly, as if he’s already said too much, more than he planned to say, more than he wanted to say.

He moves closer to her. She sees his face in the mirror next to hers, and even through her terror, she can’t help thinking, as she has always thought, that he is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

Then Ginny closes her eyes, because she has to. “Oh, gods,” she can hear herself whimpering, hating the cowardly sound of her own voice. “You knew, Malfoy. You knew all along that I was coming here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco and Ginny find out that the past isn't over between them-- in fact, it's not even past. Yep, this is the first NC-17 chapter (although not the last.)

+++

“No,” says Draco. “No, I didn’t. But, Weasley, why did you?”

“You did, and you know perfectly well why, Malfoy!” insisted Ginny. “You laid a trap, and you’ve been waiting for me.”

“I didn’t know you were here until an hour and a half ago,” said Draco. “You disturbed the spells around the Manor then.”

She blinked. “But the way I came in—I didn’t think it would affect any spells. I was right, then. The Death Eaters really have figured out a way to use magic, or you’ve figured it out for them, rather. Haven’t you?”

“No,” says Draco in a very clipped voice. “You caused a disturbance in the primal magic here because of… because…” He cuts himself off and does not look at her, but she can look into his eyes in the mirror, and she knows exactly what he is talking about. She can feel something within her starting to tremble unbearably, something that will fall apart within minutes, seconds.

“There’s no point in playing games now, is there?” she asks. “Why don’t you just tell me the truth? You knew I came here to find Harry and—and--” At the last second, she avoids saying Ron’s name. She’s not sure why, but she’s learned over the past two years to trust her instinct, and some inner voice is beginning to wonder if it would be wise to let Draco Malfoy know that the Order thinks, that she is so sure, that her brother is at the Manor.

Draco’s eyes darken. He takes Ginny’s arm in an iron grip and leads her away from the mirror, seating her stiffly in a chair. “Are you saying that the Order actually thinks Potter is here?”

“Yes,” said Ginny. “It doesn’t make any difference now for you to know that. So you won’t have to torture it out of me, Malfoy. “

He gave a short laugh. “You can’t be bloody serious. He’s never been here.”

“He’s never been—what do you mean?”

“Just what I said.” Draco studies her. “Did you seriously think we kidnapped him? We didn’t.”

“But then what happened to him?”

“I assure you, I don’t have the slightest idea.” He quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you were counting on Potter coming back to save the day?”

“I…” She really can’t think of anything to say.

“Because if you were, then you can’t win this game, silly girl. With your all-important king missing, you don’t even have any reason to keep up the fight, do you?”

His tone is so superior, so mocking. He’s lying to her. Of course he is. He must know where Harry is. And if he knows that, then he knows where her brother is, too. Tears prickle at the corner of her eyes. “But you do know about Harry, Malfoy,” she says, and she just can’t keep her voice steady. “Oh, sweet Merlin, can’t you just tell me? It can’t make any difference now.” Because I’ll never get out of Malfoy Manor now, she thought. I’ll be held prisoner here… if I’m lucky.

He is studying her closely. “Of course, I’m sure that not knowing Potter’s whereabouts must have distressed you deeply over the past two years,” he says.

“How could it not?” she asks bitterly. If they’d had Harry, the war would have been won! He’d just thrown that in her face. What more was there to say?

“Yes, how could it not, all right…” He looks away from her for a moment. “So you’ve really thought I knew all along what happened to him? Once and for all, Weasley, I don’t. I don’t have the slightest idea, any more than I know what really happened to the Dark Lord—yes, yes, I know what Potter said, but nobody else was there, were they?”

He has hit on her own suspicions, the one that nobody else seems to share, but this is painful too. It only reminds her of how it used to seem that their minds worked in sync, as well as their bodies. “Yes. We’ve always thought you knew. That’s why the Order planned for me to come here to look for him. We had to do something. It’s been two years, it’s seemed hopeless, but we couldn’t just give up on him!”

Draco’s face has been darkening like a thundercloud throughout her entire speech, and it finally explodes. “We? Potter’s bloody useless and always has been. You’ve always been the brains behind the resistance, and we both know it; all of the Death Eaters know it, so let’s drop the stupid fucking game, shall we? You’re the one who really can’t ‘just give up’. You, the unofficial Potter widow--”

Her chair scrapes on the inlaid wooden floor, and they face each other down, like the enemies they are. “Malfoy, are you absolutely mad?” she demands. “That was almost two years ago. That was a load of publicity shite spewed out for the Daily Prophet by Rita Skeeter—she’s even the one who made up that phrase—“

He laughs without humor. “So you weren’t his adoring girlfriend then, stuck to the side of the savior of the wizarding world like a limpet?”

“Uh—“ She squirms. How could she sort out the half-truths in Draco’s statement and explain them, even if she wanted to, even if he’d listen to her?

“I see. I see. You weren’t planning your white wedding with him? I remember that article, all right.” Draco leaned so close to her that she could see the darker gray flecks in his silvery eyes. “Of course, Rita Skeeter didn’t know it was already too late for that by the time Potter got round to you, did she?”

Ginny jerks back so that he can’t see the tears starting in her eyes at his deliberate cruelty; he doesn’t deserve to know that he’s hurt her; he’s going to hurt her enough after this, he’s hurt her enough already, but he follows her.

“So what were you to Potter, exactly?” he demands in a low, deadly voice. “What was he to you? And tell me, if you don’t mind terribly, because I’ve always wondered about it—just how long did you wait after me to jump into bed with him? Two weeks? One week? Was it even one fucking day, Weasley? Did he get my sloppy seconds? Did he ever know, did he ever guess, did you ever call out my name, did you ever hold him in your arms and wish that I were in his place, did you ever wish you’d taken the bargain I offered you, wish you’d done what I’d begged you to do; no Malfoy ever begs for anything but you made me beg, Weasley, so did you tell Potter about that, and did both of you laugh about what you’d done to me while you fucked him, did you laugh and laugh and laugh over the fool you’d made of Draco Malfoy--”

Ginny hauls back and slaps Draco across the face, hard. They stare at each other. He has a perfect red print of her hand across his pale skin.

“I came here to find Harry because Hermione said he was here, and because I had no choice,” she says passionately. “I came here to find my brother because I had to, because I felt like I’d die if I didn’t. And Ron’s here, Malfoy, I know he’s here! If you don’t want to tell me if Harry’s here, if you don’t even know if he’s here or not, well, I’m not so sure I care anymore. Just tell me where Ron is. Just rescue Ron. Just give my brother back to me. I’ll do anything, Malfoy, anything.”

His face doesn’t change, but he keeps looking at her. He knows. He knows exactly where my brother is. Ginny is as sure as if she’s been given the answer by primal magic, and perhaps, she thinks, she has. No matter what it takes, I’m going to get him to tell me.

Draco opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t say anything, and Ginny can’t wait. She catapults herself into his arms, kissing him frantically, his mouth, his neck, yanking the buttons of his shirt open, reaching round to cup his arse, reaching down to try to get between his legs, and all the time begging, begging, begging him to tell her where Ron is.

‘Please, please, please. I know you’re angry, I know you can’t forgive me, and you don’t have to, don’t forgive me, if you want me, Malfoy, you can have me,” she babbles as she struggles to touch him and he tries to hold her still. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything—“

“No, Weasley, no—“

“I’ll let you shag me again, isn’t that what you want? I know it is. I can tell. You don’t have to say, you don’t have to admit it, you don’t have to say anything, I’ll get into this bed and you can have me right now, just tell me what you want me to do, because I’ll do anything, anything at all—“

“Stop it! Stop!”

He traps her hands at her sides, restraining her, and finally she breaks into wild crying, collapsing against his chest and sobbing into his shirt.

“Shh,” he says over and over again, stroking her back. “Shh.”

“I’ll do anything,” she repeats, hopelessly.

“You don’t have to,” says Draco at last. “I’ve already let your brother escape.”

Her head jerks up. “Wh-what?”

“I arranged for him to escape the dungeons this morning,” says Draco. “That’s why I came back early. I never had any hand in capturing him in the first place; that was entirely Mulciber’s doing. As soon as I found out, I knew that I’d have to make sure of his safety. He was slated for torture today; I had that order cancelled, arguing that we’d never information out of him that way, and I had a trusted house-elf open the lock on his cell. Ron Weasley got out at eight o’clock, and I was, of course, shocked and infuriated when the news reached me in Munich, which was my official location at the time. “

Ginny stares at him numbly. “I… uh… I thought the cells in the dungeon were protected by very old, very powerful Locking spells. By earth magic. I wouldn’t have thought that just opening them would have been enough to let anyone escape.” That seems to be all she can think of to say at the moment.

“Oh, it wouldn’t have been,” says Draco. “But there are older magics than that. How did you open this door?”

She looks away from him slightly. “Uh… with the Abend spell.” She knows that he knows what sort of older, more powerful magic allowed her to do it just as well as she does.

“Your brother could tap that power through the blood bond, although he wasn’t aware of it,” says Draco. “Don’t think he was. He simply thought he escaped on his own.”

“Thank all the gods Ron didn’t know,” Ginny says fervently.

He smiles crookedly. “I’ve got to agree with that. Otherwise, I really think that your brother might have found that killing me was a more attractive option than escape from the Manor, even at this late date.”

Ginny keeps looking down at the coverlet. It is the same one she remembers from two years before.

“You saved him,” she says.

“Someone else got him off the grounds safely,” said Draco. “Never mind who. You’ve got a mole in the Resistance, let’s just say.”

“But it was you who saved him,” said Ginny.

“It wasn’t the first time I’ve done it,” says Draco.

“You saved me a few months ago too, didn’t you? And then again last week.”

“Yes.” Draco’s lips tighten. “I’ve saved you more times than you could guess.”

“I think I’ve always suspected it,” Ginny says thoughtfully. “I’ve tried to do the same for you. There are times when the Order possibly could have even won the entire war, or civil war, or whatever this really is, except that I couldn’t plan the battles well enough, because I had to save you. You’ve been my weakness, Draco Malfoy.”

“And you’ve been mine, Ginny Weasley,” he says.

“Do you regret it?” she asks, as if her question contains no more than simple curiousity.

“No,” he says. “I’m very selfish, you see. And if you had died…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “So no, I can’t regret doing anything I had to do to keep you alive.”

“Me neither,” said Ginny. “I mean, I’m glad that you kept me alive, obviously. But I can’t regret doing what I had to do to keep you alive… Draco.” It is the first time she has called him by his first name since that day two years before, and she knows that he remembers too.

“I saved you when I could,” he says. “Every time I could. Ginny, you need to leave, now.”

“No,” she says.

They are both silent for a moment, then. Ginny looks down at Draco’s large, strong hand. Hers would fit neatly into it. She wants to move her hand and test the fit as much as she wants to take the next breath of air. She feels a tremor go through her entire body, and when she glances up, she thinks she sees him shuddering minutely, too.

“Now what?” she asks.

Then she knows the answer to that question. So she answers it herself, by leaning forward and kissing him.

He shudders so hard that she’s afraid he will fall, but they’re already on a bed, after all, so it wouldn’t make much difference. She kisses him again. His breathing quickens. She runs her hand down the side of his cheek in a gesture that she remembers he always loved. He places his hand over hers.

“Don’t do this,” he says hoarsely.

“I have to,” says Ginny.

“You don’t understand. Why did you have to come here now, now of all times, Ginny?” he groans. “You can’t do it—will you just listen to me—“

“You can’t think I’m doing this as some sort of thanks for saving Ron, can you?” she demands. “I want this, Draco Malfoy. I’ve dreamed about it every single day and every single night for two years.”

He lets all his breath out in a rush. “Oh fuck, so have I,” he says, as if giving up, giving in, and then he does fall, but towards her, and because she falls towards him too, they are two failings who become firm, and they come to rest in each other. Except that they don’t come to rest at all, of course.

It’s been so long, she thinks feverishly, so very long, for her anyway, and she wonders if it’s been very long for Draco too, but she won’t ask him. Nothing has ever felt so wonderful and right as his hands pulling off her blouse and her trousers and her bra and her knickers; she yanks off his clothing as fast as she can, they can’t get to each other fast enough, and when they are finally naked in each other’s arms and she feels his body against hers again, she starts crying with relief. He looks horrified until she manages to choke out, “Oh, gods, I’ve wanted you for so long, Draco, I’ve wanted this so much,” and he whispers, “I never thought I’d have you like this again.”

The words are so awful that she has to ward them off by running her hands all over him, frantically, and she writhes and moans as he touches her and she feels his big hands everywhere on her again, but she can’t wait long. “Please,” she begs. “Please.” He groans and moves on top of her, and she spreads her legs for him, and she feels a rush of moisture at the long-forgotten sensation of his fingers between her thighs, stroking her, readying her body for him. The first little twinges ripple through her, but she shakes her head. Not yet, not yet. He adjusts himself, and the very tip of his blunt hardness caresses her, spreading her, beginning to ease into her. She catches her breath. How can this feel so familiar, when she’s only felt him this way once in her life before?

He begins to push his hips forward, and she winces. “Am I hurting you?” he whispers.

“No, no,” she says. “It’s just been such a long time, and you’re so big there— oh, don’t give me that look!” She smacks the back of his head.

‘Slowly,” he says. “I’ll go as slowly as I can—oh, Ginny, oh, fuck--” He begins to slide into her and he does go exquisitely slowly, his face tightening as if in agony. Inch by velvet inch, he moves into her, stretching her, widening her, until he gives an intense groan and she knows that she has taken him in all the way.

She is filled with him from top to bottom, and the sensation is so exquisite that she wants to cry again, but she knows that they’ve only started and she is determined not to miss a moment of this. “Now”, she says, and she pumps her hips up at him, and he pushes back down at her and they move together like two halves of a whole, reunited at last. He reaches down and strokes her expertly as he fills her steadily with himself, over and over again, and she gasps in astonishment. The most intense climax she has ever known slams into her in savage waves. She convulses around him, squeezing him so hard that she can actually feel every ridge and convolution, everything that makes this part of his body so uniquely his own, and he fits into her so rightly, so perfectly, that this exquisite stimulation is enough to trigger another cascade of pleasure for her.

He swears hopelessly and comes instantly, and she feels the hot endless rush of his climax. But he murmurs “give me a moment, just a moment,” and he grows hard inside her, and he is ready for her again. And for this stolen time in Draco Malfoy’s bedroom in the headquarters of the Death Eaters, so endless and so brief, they are both inexhaustible.

Afterwards, she lies on his chest, and their breathing slows. “Are you all right?” Draco asks her.

“All right?” she echoes. “That was… it was…” She hits him over the head again, just for his disgustingly self-satisfied look.

“It’s been so long,” he murmurs. “Too long, Ginny.”

“How long has it been?” Ginny wants to bite her tongue as off as soon as the question even started to escape her lips. She really doesn’t want to know the answer.

Draco looks at her narrowly, as if thinking over exactly what sort of answer to give. “Quite some time,” he says, his voice neutral.

A funny little flutter begins in Ginny’s stomach. She tries to ignore it. “Oh,” she says. Well, that would certainly explain why that first time was so fast. And it might help to explain why there was a second time right after that, a much slower, longer one, though. And a third…

He turns to her, very suddenly. “How many?” he asks.

“What?” she stammers. He has caught her off guard. She expected Draco to ask how long it had been for her, and then maybe she could change the subject after that, somehow.

“How many men, after me? Since me?”

“Just one,” she says, unable to lie.

Draco is silent. He certainly has to know who this is, the only other man she has ever slept with, the only other boy she has ever thought she loved. She knows he knows, without being told. He surely would have been happier if her record matched his own, or at least what she thinks his had to be, if she’d had a dozen other men, twenty, thirty, a hundred even, if it just means that she hasn’t had that one. Just not Harry Potter. Ginny knows that as well.

“Why did you start coming on the raids about six months ago?” she asks suddenly. “You never did that before.”

“Because my father died,” he says, as if it is an answer. “I wanted—I thought—“ He breaks off ,sounding uncertain. “I wanted you to see me, Ginny. I had to see you.”

Something flutters in her chest, like a very small butterfly. She does not, she will not, try to give it a name.

He strokes her side, shoulder to waist to hip, and she feels him take a deep breath.

“Do you miss him very much?” he asks, his voice deliberate, like a man running a knife over his own flesh to watch the line of blood flow. “Potter?”

“I don’t miss him at all,” says Ginny, her voice just as deliberate.

He strokes her in the same way for several more minutes, like a cat.

“The last time you were here,” he says, “I never should have let you get out of this bed.”

“You didn’t let me go,” says Ginny. “I left.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have let you leave, then. What do you think about that?”

Ginny feels exactly as if she is perched on a cliff, peering over the edge of an abyss. The slightest move could cause her to plummet to her doom.

“I don’t know,” she says, and she is not so sure that her careful words will keep her from falling after all.

He rolls over onto his back, taking her with him. “I’m so tired, Ginny,” he murmurs. “I haven’t been sleeping lately.”

“Neither have I,” she admitted.

“I think I could sleep now, with you here,” he says. “Stay with me.”

She nods, not quite trusting herself to speak. He moves behind her and curls into her, spoon-fashion, and in only a few minutes, his breathing has become soft and regular, ruffling the back of her hair.

Stay with me.

His words follow her into the dream.


End file.
